Keep two separate lists. The everything list is where all tasks live, assignments, admin, emails to send, and books to read. The today list contains only three to five things you’re committing to doing today, chosen from the everything list.
ADHD brains are strongly driven by interest, urgency, novelty, and challenge. Tasks that feel boring, repetitive, or low-stakes are genuinely harder to start and sustain, not because of laziness, but because of how the brain’s dopamine system works.
This means the most effective ADHD study strategies are ones that introduce interest, urgency, or novelty into tasks that would otherwise feel flat.
One of the hardest balancing acts at university is managing your energy alongside your workload. Pushing through when you’re depleted leads to poor work and longer recovery time. But completely switching off can make getting back into study mode feel impossible.
If you find academic writing genuinely difficult — not because you don’t understand the subject, but because getting ideas out of your head and onto the page feels almost impossible, you’re far from alone.
Take a few minutes to think about which sensory inputs you find most draining. Is it noise? Bright or flickering lights? Crowded spaces? The smell of the canteen? Being clear about your specific triggers means you can plan around them rather than just hoping for the best.
Read ahead — even briefly. Spending 10 minutes reading the lecture title and any pre-reading means your brain has a framework to hang new information on. You don’t need to understand it all, just familiarise yourself with the key words.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by a busy week at university — lectures at different times, deadlines creeping up, unexpected changes to your timetable, you’re not alone. For many of us, unpredictability is one of the hardest things about university life.
